Dimmers

[Claude J]

I have discovered and felt I should make  everyone aware that a dimmer NEVER reaches full line voltage

See below

All meter measurements are taken with dimmer at max

Line voltage is 120/119VAC and measured and stay consistent with the load from the 250Watt lamp.

With SCR Dimmer and the lamp load

with Factory NOS Lava Lamp Dimmer and Lamp load

Open circuit with no dimmer and settings maxed

[Alfred]

AFAIK, an AC dimmer like that operates by chopping off part of each AC cycle, not scaling the voltage throughout the cycle. (That would either require a much more complex circuit, or require assumptions to be made about the load.) You'd really need an oscilloscope to see what's going on. A simple AC voltage meter isn't going to give you a meaningful voltage measurement, though it does seem clear that something different is going on with the dimmer at max vs. the line.